Morgan Stanley’s second-in-command, Colm Kelleher, is retiring, opening a seat whose filling will signal the Wall Street firm’s likely heir apparent.
Kelleher, who joined Morgan Stanley MS, +1.35% in 1989, is older than Chief Executive James Gorman and wasn’t considered a candidate to succeed him. As the firm’s president, he has overseen its restructuring from an undisciplined and error-prone investment bank to a stabler financial-services giant.
Gorman praised his lieutenant’s “fierce competitive streak” and candor. “I just trust the guy,” he said in an interview Thursday. Kelleher, 61, was Morgan Stanley’s chief financial officer during the crisis, when he helped pull it back from the brink — by shrinking its balance sheet, negotiating a $9 billion lifeline from Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and working with regulators to convert the firm to a bank holding company.
Gorman said he is in no rush to fill Kelleher’s seat. He aims to stay on as CEO for three to five years and is determined to avoid the messy succession battles that roiled Morgan Stanley in the 2000s. The firm might name co-presidents, said Gorman, who himself shared that title before becoming CEO in 2010.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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